Note: Almond-eyed: Celan uses the synonym of bitter almonds for the Jews and referring to the custom of eating a bitter food at the Passover - Pesach - table, elsewhere says ‘Make me bitter, count me among the almonds.’

The Three: The triple goddess, personified perhaps as the three Graeae, who had only one eye between them, to see with, which they passed from hand to hand and struggled over, and also perhaps the Three Norns. In the myth, at the hero’s birth he is blessed by two of the Norns, but the third prophesies that he will die on the day that the candle beside him gutters. The oldest of the three seizes it, and warns the mother never to light it again until her son’s last day has come. Here the three are, equally, father, mother and son. And there are also the echoes of Ulysses and Aeneas conversing with the dead in the Underworld.

There Was Earth

There was Earth in them, and

they dug.

They dug and they dug, and so

their Day went by, and their Night. And they did not praise God,

who, so they heard, wanted all this,

who, so they heard, knew of all this.

They dug and they heard nothing more;

did not grow wise, invented no Song,

thought up for themselves no Language.

They dug.

There came a Silence, there came a Storm,

There came every Ocean.

I dig, you dig, and it digs, the Worm,

and the Singing, there, says: They dig.

O someone, o none, o no one, o you:

Where did it lead to, that nowhere-leading?

O you dig and I dig, and I dig towards you,

and on our finger awakens the Ring.

With Every Thought

With every Thought I went

out of the World: there you were,

you my Gentle One, you my Open One, and –

you received us.

Who

says that for us everything died,

that for us there the Eye broke?

Everything woke, all things began.

Vast, a Sun came swimming by, bright

a Soul and a Soul engaged, clear,

masterfully made a silence for it

a path ahead.

Lightly

you opened your Lap, quiet

rose a Breath in the Aether,

and what became cloud, was it not,

was it not Form, and for us then,

was it not

as good as a Name?

Ice, Eden

There is a Land that’s Lost,

Moon waxes in its Reeds,

and all that’s turned to frost

with us, burns there and sees.

It sees, for it has Eyes,

Earths they are, and bright.

Night, Night, Alkalis.

It sees, this Child of Sight.

It sees, it sees, we see,

I see you, you too see.

Ice will rise again before

This Hour shall cease to be.

Psalm

No-man kneads us again out of Earth and Loam,

no-man spirits our Dust.

No-man.

Praise to you, No-man.

For love of you

we will flower.

Moving

towards you.

A Nothing

we were, we are, we shall

be still, flowering:

the Nothing-, the

No-man’s-rose.

With

our Pistil soul-bright,

our Stamen heaven-torn,

our Corolla red

with the Violet-Word that we sang

over, O over

the thorn.

Note: The pistil is the female part of the flower consisting of ovary, style and stigma. The stamen is the male part containing pollen. The corolla is the whorl of leaves forming the inner envelope of the flower.